


wikihow to raise a child

by snackbaskets



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hanzo Shimada-centric, dad hanzo shimada, hanzo finds a baby despite being literally the LEAST qualified person to care for one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 18:24:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snackbaskets/pseuds/snackbaskets
Summary: i love hanzo and wanted an excuse 2 write him with a baby so here we are fellas





	wikihow to raise a child

**Author's Note:**

> im in a weird place rn so this is a lot of me warming up into writing again so, theres likely gonna b some not-so-great parts of writing in here, 
> 
> as always tho if theres any suggestions yall wanna make pls do i love ya  
> ill be back on the other series soon i think (hope) but until then, hanzo
> 
> gonna try and keep a 10-14 days between updates schedule but no promises there lmao

Mercenary work was not as easy as it used to be. Jobs were cheaper, harder to come by, more dangerous. Most any professionals looking to hire had since been swept up in Talon’s alliances, and organized crime cells were going much the same way. The majority of Hanzo’s jobs now were the result of angry civilians; a furious spouse since cheated-on, a businessman seeking to rid himself of competition, a downtrodden office worker seeking to steal her manager’s position. Petty things, with shallow sources and shallower convictions. All bad money, but better still than the nothing he would make otherwise. 

He stayed far away from any jobs connected to Talon, and even farther from those connected to Overwatch, as lucrative as they might have been. He had no interest in involving himself with whatever crusade they were fighting, and was far more focused on things of actual importance, like survival, or not being slaughtered in some other party’s pissing contest. Despite the fact, both were rather interested in _him_.Talon operatives always found him, eventually, usually within two months of his staying in one place, waving about their offered hands and spitting worthless promises he had no interest in seeing fulfilled, leaving him be only once he disappeared or declined for the umpteenth time, at which point they tried-- and failed, of course-- to kill him. 

Overwatch still might have been worse. They sent no recruiters, made no attempts to persuade him, and offered him nothing he cared about, needed, or desired. All he’d ever received were letters, handwritten, laid on his table or his bedside, his kitchen appliances, and on one memorable occasion, his own forehead, each scrawled in messy ink and signed with Genji’s name. As if it were Genji at all. The letters stopped being about joining Overwatch within the first six months of his receiving them, and now were more frequently a recounting of some meaningless exchange at their headquarters, or an update on how the agents were doing. Every time, not-Genji would write to him like they were close, as if they were _friends,_ or as if Hanzo even _cared_ , and it drove him mad. 

Someone on the street below greeted another, and it took every ounce of the Shimada training in him not to execute them both.

Hanzo was tired, angry, hungry, cold, poor, filthy, and sore, but he had a job to do, and mutilating a pair of civilians wouldn’t be good for his cover, so he stayed put. Even if they were painfully loud and friendly. And catching up right beneath his window. And yelling. 

Across the street, his mark was still lounging on their sofa, visible from the window and eating a frozen dinner with the blinds wide open and back door cracked. Really, Hanzo could cross the street and scale the building to get to them, but someone might see him first, and killing a mark in a crowded building like an apartment complex was a guarantee that they would be found quickly. The police would either send someone to check when they didn’t come into work, or the stench would bother the other occupants and they would report to the authorities before Hanzo had enough time to collect, wrap up his business, and make his exit unassuming. That, and the open blinds meant he could be caught in the act by anyone in the buildings on his side of the road, and that would also be less than ideal, so he stayed put. Like he had for the last six hours. 

He had enough time to mentally count to 3,000 before the mark started moving again. They got up, threw away whatever remained in the plastic of their dinner, and turned off the TV, popping their back-- god, Hanzo wished that were him-- and disappearing down the hall for a few minutes before returning to the living room in a new shirt and jeans. They swung a jacket over their shoulders and slipped on their shoes, flipping off all the lights and at least having the sense to lock their balcony door before leaving the apartment. They frequented a club three blocks down, Hanzo had learned, and their route rarely deviated as they made the commute; they stayed to back alleys and empty footroads rather than fighting their way through the main streets, which meant they would be painfully easy picking once they swung right at the bank two roads down. He straightened, flexing out his stiff joints and arming himself with seven knives-- Storm Bow was too conspicuous out in the open, and too tedious to get to when hidden in a guitar case-- and sliding a few expensive rings onto his fingers. Lifted from some of his marks, they probably would have sold well, but Hanzo liked feeling like he could afford having them. He also liked how nicely they broke noses. 

The apartment hallways were empty as Hanzo made his way down to the street, no one willing to go out into the spotty, smoky hallway unless they absolutely had to, rented cheap and by the hour, lit by fizzing red lights over doors and dim fluorescents on the ceiling. Hanzo’d bought five days at his room, and the landlady had just smiled too-sharp teeth and told him not to overdose in the bathroom like the last one. As such, nobody thought twice about Hanzo beyond ‘druggie looking to shoot up’ and he was unbothered as he descended the thick, sticky, carpeted stairwell and slipped out the front door, pointedly ignoring the young men and women offering him time in their rooms above. 

As per usual, his mark vanished into the alleyway beside the bank and Hanzo was soon to follow, silent as the smog that choked the city and leagues more deadly, running his thumb over the heavy ridges of his rings. They didn’t even look up before Hanzo had one arm around their neck, steady and unflinching as they clawed at his arm and fell unconscious from lack of oxygen. He let them slump against the ground long enough for him to pull the hat off their head and slam his metal foot into their temple, twice, slipping the hat back on and heaving them upright, hooking his arms under their knees and hoisting them up onto his back. They didn’t move. 

He couldn’t simply drop them to die in the dumpster outside the club, no matter how tempting it might have been considering the stench of their cologne, almost enough to knock him over with how close they were. No one looked twice at them, the pair of wandering drunkards they appeared to be, what with one of them half-conscious and burbling on the other’s back. Humiliating, but Hanzo weathered it the whole way to his decided dropoff spot outside a different, sleazier club, with an even dirtier dumpster and 10 millimeter pistol shells on the concrete. He slid the mark off his shoulder and pinned them against the dumpster with one hand in their shirt. 

“Ugh,” they gurgled.

“Silence,” he replied, and cracked his knuckles across their face, once, twice, three times, and checked their pulse. Slow, getting slower. The head trauma would kill them within the hour. He wiped his rings off on their shirt and tossed them in the trash, repositioning a bag of refuse over their face to hide the way their pale skin stood out from the dumpster’s other contents. When they were found, they would be the victim of a bar fight gone wrong, and Hanzo would be in a different city, just the way he liked it.

Now, to collect.

He made his way back onto the street, hunching into his jacket and glaring at anyone who turned their eyes his way, letting the matted, stringy mass of hair around his face hide him from recognition. Again, he went unnoticed and avoided as he made his way to the rendezvous, alone below a broken street lamp in the quietest part of a suburban neighborhood. His employer would get caught like this, of course-- house husbands and wives were the chattiest sort of person, and someone was always bound to see something in these kinds of places-- but that wasn’t any of Hanzo’s concern. They could keel over the second he got his payment, for all he cared.

He checked his watch. He’d told the employer to look here every night between one and three A.M., and they had yet to show. It was nearly 4, now, and he had watched the rendezvous enough times to know they always drove past at 2:45 sharp-- their routines were another reason they would be caught-- and he was beginning to get the feeling something had gone wrong. He slipped through the neighborhood, using the shadows and manicured trees to hide him from prying eyes as he looked to his employer’s home, all of its lights off and the minivan missing from the driveway. Had they skipped town? He certainly hoped not; hunting people for payment was a royal pain in his ass and nearly a complete waste of time. He’d still do it, of course. It was just inconvenient. 

Which was precisely why he’d bugged the car in advance. 

They were parked in an alley, oddly enough, pulled into a restaurant dropoff’s driveway in the heart of the city, tucked back enough that no one had come to investigate yet, but enough that the car would be found before tomorrow morning, if it remained. He drew two knives. 

No one stopped him as he came near the car, but the bloody arm hanging out the half-open passenger’s seat told him someone had been here before him. Blood was smudged along the walls of the alley and stained the cement below his feet, old enough to have dried, but not yet turned brown or black. A few hours, maybe. He checked below the car, behind all the boxes, inside all the boxes, and even slapped a sonic node against the restaurant garage door before he investigated the car. All came up with nothing. No intruders, no traps, no notes, no nothing. The car was the scene of a massacre, of course, but he’d been expecting as much. His employer sat in the driver’s seat, mouth hanging open and wearing a neat hole between her eyes along with the ugly gashes carved into her chest, three lines in succession, made to look like the talons of a bird had torn her to ribbons. Her husband had been treated the same in the passenger’s seat, both of them haphazardly dropped into their seats to be visible from afar. Hanzo swore a small novel in Japanese, stowing his knives and kicking the ground. Talon had got to them first, then. Warning him of what would happen when Hanzo took a job, ruining any future employers’ faith in his security. As if to make reparations, a neatly packaged stack of bills was laid on the dashboard of the car, easily triple what he’d been promised. Hanzo saw it for what it was: a temptation by Talon to convince him to turn to them for his future work. He would refuse, of course, but took all of the bills anyway. 

He was about to leave the scene behind and pack up his things when something screamed. He dove behind one of the crates and drew his knives, heart hammering against his ribs as he fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears. Again, the thing shrieked, high-pitched and grating, but when nothing exploded, he looked up. It was coming from inside the Subaru, painfully sharp so much so it made Hanzo’s skin crawl. An alarm, meant to trap him here? To alert someone and leave him at the scene of the crime? Whatever it was, it made the sound again, albeit quieter this time. Slowly, keeping his body low to the ground and his knives clutched in his hands, he crept forward, transferring one knife to sit between his teeth as he wrapped his jacket sleeve around his palm and cracked open the door. The squealing grew more desperate, and this close, it almost sounded _human_. With his blood pumping icy through his veins, Hanzo opened the door the rest of the way, waiting for an explosive to go off and take him to pieces, or an even louder alarm to start pounding out for the world to hear, but what he found was much, much worse.

Sitting in the backseat, wriggling and frantic, was a _baby_. A real, living, human baby. Straining in its carseat and tear-streaked and stinking. 

“Fuck.”


End file.
